The One-Dimensional 3D Gun

“3D ‘Wiki Weapon’ guns could go into testing by end of year, maker claims.” Thus blares the headline of an article in The Guardian by Alexander Hotz. The subheadline: “The man behind a project to create the world’s first printable gun plans to test its first prototypes in the coming months.”

Glock 19

I can just imagine the heads of antigun types exploding at the thought. The article maintains the hyped tone while carefully avoiding the science underlying—or more accurately—not underlying it.

Apparently after word of the project leaked out, a company that was providing a 3D printer took it back. Now, one Cody Wilson, the man behind the plan, is waiting for BATFE approval in the form of a license to manufacture firearms. The article essentially begins with this teaser:

Prototypes of what would be the world’s first fully 3D-printable plastic weapon could go into testing before the end of the year, the organization behind the controversial project has claimed.

But thereafter, about 95% of the article focuses entirely on the business details involved rather than anything about the supposed technology, which it leaves to the imagination of readers. The most deeply the article delves into technology is:

Once Defense Distributed receives it’s federal firearms license, Wilson plans to start manufacturing prototypes immediately, working from four or five blueprints that were submitted to the group from independent designers.

That’s barely deep enough to wet the bottom half of a sheet of paper. What’s the reality of this sort of project? Hype or hope?

Three-dimensional printers are relatively new technology. Lacking Star Trek “Replicator” technology, they are limited by several factors, two being of greatest importance in this instance: size and materials.

Generally speaking the process works by creating layer upon layer of materials in the 100 micrometere range until the piece is completed. Various types of materials, including some metals, can be fashioned in this way, but of course, making complex parts of metal is very expensive and requires the incorporation of intense heat in the form of laser energy. The size of a finished piece, is, of course, limited by the size of the printer itself. Even relatively simple work on pieces such as small sculptures with no moving parts currently takes a great deal of time. In addition, such printers can currently work with only a single medium at once.

There is little doubt that a properly configured 3D printer could turn out a weapon that looked functional, but highly doubtful one could turn out a weapon that was truly functional. It is also highly likely that such technology would not be even remotely cost effective for production in any quantity.

Modern firearms are complex mechanisms that must be carefully engineered, particularly in parts like the barrel/breach assembly, the bolt, the gas system, and a variety of other small parts, many of which require specialized heat treatments to attain the requisite levels of hardness or flexibility. While 3D printers can reproduce things to tolerances in the 15 micrometere range, hardness and strength are far more important. Firearm parts not only have to survive great stresses, they have to last.

It is one thing to create a resin replica of a small sculpture with no moving parts, but quite another to create a handgun made of multiple materials with multiple interlocking and moving parts, parts that must interface flawlessly, time after time, round after round, for years under all manner of weather conditions. The kind of testing necessary to be certain a single important firearm part like a barrel/breach would not only hold together upon firing, but would produce the proper accuracy and longevity would be a lengthy and daunting project in and of itself. Understanding that the same quality and type of steel is not necessary in most other parts of the firearm, helps to point out the inherent flaws in this particular scheme.

Cutaway Glock 22

While I could be mistaken, the technology simply does not exist to produce a complete, safe and functional firearm in one production run of a 3D printer. One cannot load the materials, pull up the design software, press the start button, and four hours later, pick up a completed Glock 26 that will eject its newly formed magazine, allow its slide to be cycled, and which, charged with ammunition, will fire as many rounds as the shooter chooses as quickly and accurately as they prefer. The cutout view of a Glock 22 above illustrates at least some of the involved difficulties.

Current mass production technology makes such weapons far faster, much more cheaply, and to a much higher degree of safety, functionality and reliability. This is particularly true where large numbers of weapons are being produced. However, this is precisely where antigun alarmism will be likely to take off.

Couldn’t the technology be used by criminals or terrorists to produce undetectable, “plastic” guns? Making things of cheap materials such as various plastics is one thing, making far more complex mechanisms that must, of necessity, stand extreme heat and pressures is quite another. Such fabrication would require very expensive and precise machines, and expensive and specialized metal alloys. Even if the technology existed to produce such weapons of a piece rather than the many component parts of a completed firearm, there would be no point in using it, as firearms are cheap and plentiful. What would be the point in smuggling a complex and expensive 3D printer, computer and all the supporting materials to produce a handgun or even a rifle many times cheaper, smaller and lighter than the machines and materials necessary to make them? When one considers the sheer amount of time required—and the fact that ammunition would still have to be purchased, not fabricated–it would make even less sense. And without federal licensure, making any firearm–and many specific parts–is a federal felony.

Place this one in the “plastic gun undetectable by airport X-ray machines” and “cop-killer bullet” categories. There is no such thing, and it’s unlikely there ever will be, certainly not in the practical sense the article and such technology implies.

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20 thoughts on “The One-Dimensional 3D Gun”

One compelling aspect of 3D printing though is that you could produce a plastic AR15 lower. Since the lower is the firearm, and the rest of the components can be purchased without a DROS, the 3D printer is effectively enabling you to produce an unlicensed working firearm.

Welcome to SMM. You’re quite correct that 3D printer technology could conceivably produce a functional AR15 lower. But the problem, again, is why would even a criminal go to the trouble of buying the printer and all supporting materials, computers and software? They would still have to buy and learn how to properly assemble and set up the remaining parts of the gun, which considering the black market in firearms, would cost many times what a complete firearm might cost–even a fully automatic firearm–which criminals might just buy via the Federal government anyway! My experience is that few criminals are so industrious or bright. And of course, absent a federal license, each lower produced would constitute a separate federal felony.

There are, of course, a variety of technical issues involved too, as contemporary polymer AR15 lowers are commonly reinforced, not only with metal, but glass or carbon fibers, etc., which I don’t believe is possible with 3D printing technology. The durability issue won’t seem to go away.

“But the problem, again, is why would even a criminal go to the trouble of buying the printer and all supporting materials, computers and software?” — because those are perfectly legal, can be purchased with cash and no back ground check, don’t even need to step foot in a firearms retailer, etc. And, a “criminal” on a matter like this wouldn’t work alone. Regarding criminal elements, that might be the point for something like this. Easy to destroy, easier to make, no muss no fuss production. Granted, that is real conspiracy theory territory, but assuming my personal avenues of purchasing pre-made items was removed, the next logical course of action would be to create my own. Something like this could turn a 50 cent zip gun into something that concievably could hold a barrel, and grant some accuracy and range.

What you suggest is possible, but when a usable, reliable, and reusable”zip gun” can be made for pennies from parts available in any Home Depot or hardware store, why go to the trouble of 3D printing? Criminal masterminds of the kind often depicted in fiction are just that, fictional, thank goodness. Most crooks are simply far too lazy and too lacking in smarts. They are far, far more likely simply to steal weapons and ammunition from cars and homes.

And speaking of conspiracy theories, if guns were banned, would not the kind of government willing and able to do that also ban 3D printers and gun-making software, as well as the materials necessary to make such weapons?

“And speaking of conspiracy theories, if guns were banned, would not the kind of government willing and able to do that also ban 3D printers and gun-making software, as well as the materials necessary to make such weapons?” — right after they ban Home Depot for being able to make a zip gun for pennies on the dollar. ;)

The point of the additional prototyped material is to make a zip gun have better than .0blank range. Of course, were I so inclined, I wouldn’t use a prototype printer for a single bullet. Pre printed “plastic” offers much easier placement of other ingredients beyond firearms, and literally requires no leg work at all to rally.

There’s something else, over and above RuleofOrder’s point in reply that the current idea isn’t to make a zip gun but to make a somewhat better gun as easily as a zip gun. The limitations you correctly point out are expected to get ever less; it’s much like the answer an early nineteenth century gave to avisitor who asked what use this new-fangled electricity stuff was: “what use is a baby?”. For instance, currently it would be just as easy to regulate the 3-D printers as directly made guns – but part of all this testing and prototyping is aimed at making the whole practice of 3-D printing self sustaining, with one printer able to make another. Once that happens, it would only be the first printer that cost a lot, that could be regulated easily, etc. All the later printers would get run off for people by friends or other contacts, at little more than the cost of raw materials, energy and transport. It would be as hard to regulate them or their own products – like the proper guns they would by then be capable of making completely – as the open source software they would be using.

IF you’re talking pure 3D printing, you’re correct. However, CNC machining is ALSO available at the home level, for levels of “home” (say, $10K for a home CNC machining setup. . . .). Additionally, hybrid-material guns ARE coming available (carbon-fiber barrels and chambers), which potentially COULD be extruded.

Thanks for your great comment and welcome to SMM! The article that inspired my response seems to suggest that a working firearm can be made using only a 3D printer. There was very little mention of technical details, but that was the general implication. You are indeed correct that CNC machines are available that could produce the necessary metal components of a firearm, but again, that’s a very different matter than a 3D printer making a functional firearm–including all components–in a single production run, pass, or whatever the correct term might be.

As far as I understand the technology, there are indeed some exploring carbon fiber and other synthetics for use in firearms, and a carbon fiber barrel might even take the pressure of firing a few cartridges, but at the moment, would be useless for long term use, as even cleaning such a barrel could be damaging to it, as would merely firing cartridges, and I don’t even want to think about how long any kind of “rifling” might last.

That approach reminds me of one used a submachine gun I saw in a magazine many years ago (I forget the gun’s name). With that, the body was a hinged box made of cheap cast alloy, that was held closed by lugs at the base of the barrel that were pulled tight by a sort of nut around the base of the barrel, that was screwed further down the barrel and so pulled it home, locking the box. The neat trick was that one side of the box just worked as a cover for the other side, which was cast so that it worked as a jig for all the other parts. That meant that all the individual parts could be simple individually, and the box itself put it all together, doing the intricacies of assembly just by being that jig; all the clever stuff of manufacture had already been done, in making the moulds for the halves of the box.

As I understand what he’s doing, it’s more of a challenge to the idiocy of our current gun laws. He’s only planning to make the lower receiver of an AR-15, because that is “legally” the entire “firearm”. The upper receiver, barrel, trigger group, etc are all parts and will be purchased and assembled onto the printed receiver.

The other part of the social commentary is the eventual goal of putting all the “ready to print” files out on the internet. The ATF has said that if you have the parts for a gun around but haven’t assembled them, you are in constructive possession. Is downloading the file and storing it on your computer constructive possession of a firearm? How about if your computer has a 3D printer attached? What if you have all the parts on hand but the lower receiver and a 3D printer. Are you in constructive possession because you would just have to download the file and print it?

The whole point of this exercise is to show how inane and capricious the ATF is.

All this seems an expensive and convoluted way to prove that a Federal bureaucracy is inefficient, irrational and capricious. Isn’t that rather like spending millions to prove bears play in the woods or the Pope is Catholic?

“What if you have all the parts on hand but the lower receiver and a 3D printer”

Bad sentence construction. Try this — what if you have a 3D printer and all the part except the lower receiver on hand? Are you in constructive possession because you would just have to download the file and print?